Functions of the Foundation

The Board of Trustees of the Maori Education Foundation consists of a chairman, being the trustee appointed by the Governor-General, and seven other trustees, namely, the Director of Education, the Secretary of Maori Affairs, an officer in the Department of Education, a Maori member of Parliament, and nominees of the New Zealand Maori Council of Tribal Executives, the Dominion Executive of the Maori Women's Welfare League, and the Minister of Maori Affairs. The Foundation is a body corporate. One of its main functions is to apply its funds to the education and training of Maoris by the establishment, equipping, and maintenance of schools, the majority of whose pupils are Maoris, and by financially assisting schools where Maoris are receiving education. It may make grants to bodies formed for the promotion of Maori education and for encouraging the Maori people to appreciate the advantages of better education. It may provide bursaries and scholarships to assist Maoris to attend post-primary schools and universities and to undertake postgraduate study. Another function of the Board is to provide special research or study grants and grants for vocational training, as well as books, clothing, and other equipment for the holders of bursaries, scholarships, and grants. Any assistance from the Foundation is, however, additional to the existing facilities for the education of Maori youth.

The Foundation movement to raise funds was launched on 26 March 1962 with the sum of £125,000 from the Government which in addition agreed to subsidise donations £1 for £1. A network of district and local committees for the whole country was set up, the co-chairman of each district being a mayor or deputy mayor of a town or city within the district together with a prominent Maori citizen.

At the end of 1963 the Foundation life membership stood at 3,000 and the capital funds at about £640,000. Over a thousand applications for assistance had been received, and £34,000 disbursed to over 400 students on the basis of the merits and needs of each case. The majority of awards have been made to post-primary-school students, to others in widely varying vocational fields, and to about 50 university students.

by John Sidney Gully, M.A., DIP.N.Z.L.S., Assistant Chief Librarian, General Assembly Library, Wellington.

MAORI HEALTH AND WELFARE

The Maoris of pre-European days lived in villages, the size of which varied according to the productivity of the surrounding land. The houses were centred round the marae or village green, while the chief's dwelling and superior houses occupied the end farthest from the entrance gateway. In large villages fences divided the dwellings into groups. As remarked upon by Captain Cook, each was occupied by different sections of the inhabitants – usually a body of kinsmen. Each village also had its proper sanitary arrangements, in the form of a common latrine near the edge of a cliff or in some remote spot on the outskirts. Since these villages were sited on hilltops, one must assume from recorded descriptions that Maoris of those times led lives which were of a reasonable hygienic level.

When muskets came into New Zealand as barter in return for food, flax, and kauri spars, there was no longer any need for the Maoris to live in their fortified villages on the hills. They came down from the hills, musket in hand, to save themselves the labour of carrying provisions and fuel to their hill fortresses. On the lowlands and in the centre of their cultivations they built themselves a novel kind of fortification adapted to the capabilities of their new weapon. This was their destruction. There, in swamps, they built their oven-like houses, where water even in summer sprang to the pressure of the foot, and where in winter flooding was common. Under these conditions the Maoris were cut down by disease. No advice would they take; they could not see the enemy which killed them and therefore did not believe the Europeans who pointed out the cause of their destruction. For many years, muskets had disturbed the delicate balance of power held by the small communities of Maoris in New Zealand. It is estimated that during this period 80,000 Maoris died in the musket wars, and many more from European diseases.

In 1906 Dr Maui Pomare, then a Maori Health Officer, made his official report: “We have looked into the question of the decline of the Maori, and have found the causes were legion. Bad housing, feeding, clothing, unventilated rooms, unwholesome pas, were all opposed to the perpetuation of the race; but a deeper knowledge of the Maori reveals to us the fact that these are not the only potent factors in the causation of his decay. Like an imprisoned bird of the forest, he pines for the liberty and freedom of his alpine woods. This was a warrior race, used to fighting for liberty or to death. All this has gone. Fighting is no more. There is no alternative but to become a Pakeha. Was not this saying uttered by the mouth of a dying chief many generations ago: Kei muri i te awa kapara he tangata ke, mana te ao, he ma. (Shadowed behind the tattooed face, a stranger stands, he who owns the earth and he is white.)”

Population Increase

Pomare was convinced that his people would not follow the Tasmanian to extinction; he believed that the destiny of the Maori lay in their absorption by the Pakeha, and that a new race would emerge from the union. In 1906 the census showed that the tide had turned and there was an increase in the Maori population of 4,588. In 1958 the natural increase of the Maori was 37·57 per thousand, as compared with 16·26 per thousand for the non-Maori New Zea-landers. This high natural increase of the Maori is accompanied by a significantly higher birthrate, together with a steadily declining Maori deathrate. The rates for the non-Maori have remained fairly stable. At their present rate of increase the Maoris could comprise 14·7 per cent of the population by the year 2000, as compared with 6·65 per cent in 1959.

This high rate of population increase per thousand of existing population may be transitional as there is a comparatively larger proportion of the Maoris under 21 years of age as compared with 40 per cent of the non-Maoris. For the same reason the death rate, when expressed as a rate per thousand of the population, appears much lower among the Maoris than non-Maoris. There is also a slightly higher proportion of Maori females in the child-bearing ages – 42 per cent, as compared with 39 per cent for non-Maoris. As the Maori population evolves to a more normal distribution of age structure, some fall in the birthrate per thousand of population can be expected, coupled with a rise in the deathrate on the same basis.

Although the Maori deathrate is lower than the European, it should be noted that, because of the different age structure in New Zealand of both populations, a comparison of the European-Maori deathrate, based on specific age rates, gives a totally different picture.

Death Rates, Europeans and Maoris

Maori-European Standards of Health

In the pre-school period more than three Maori children die in proportion to every European child. At school age, children are at the healthiest stage of their lives yet Maori deaths are proportionately just under four times those of the European. In adolescence and early adult life (15–24 years) the Maori rate for men is but double that of the European, whereas in women of these ages the Maori rate is four times greater. In these ages tuberculosis exacts a heavy toll in young Maori women. From 25 to 44 years the deathrate is small among the European, but substantial among the Maori, the rates being treble those of the European. After 45 years the disparity of Maori deaths over European declines, but there is still considerable discrepancy. The reasons for these disparities may be assessed as follows:

1. A High Birthrate

   Whenever races have a very high birthrate, this is usually followed by a high infantile mortality rate, because it means that a high proportion of the population are dependant, and therefore not able to contribute either towards the economic support of the population or the management of the family unit. In effect, two parents have to look after the welfare of a large number of children.

2. Substandard Housing

   This high birthrate is followed naturally by a higher proportion of substandard housing among Maoris than among Europeans, and even where the housing conditions are reasonable, housing tends to become substandard by reason of overcrowding.

3. Overcrowding

   A small social survey carried out by the Social Science School of the Victoria University of Wellington estimates that the size of the average Maori rural family is 12 as compared with five for non-Maoris, and that the average Maori urban family is six as compared with three to four for non-Maori.

4. Emotional Instability

   There are a higher number of Maoris suffering from this disorder, because with large families it is difficult for parents to give sufficient individual attention and affection to children in the community where their traditional cultural pattern is being modified so quickly and rapidly by the impact of Western culture. There is also a lack of security because Maori families are moving rapidly from one social level to another with each succeeding generation.

Types of Employment

In 25 years from 1936 to 1961 there has been a marked change in the type of work which the Maori does. Because the 1936 and 1961 census have different classifications, it is impossible to draw comparisons in all fields of employment. In 1936, however, 45·29 per cent of Maoris were employed in primary production. That this figure in 1961 had dropped to 21·9 per cent gives some indication of the movement of Maoris from rural into urban areas. Craftsmen are unfortunately classified here, with process workers and labourers, but into this group fall 44·5 per cent of Maoris in the 1961 census.

High Disease Incidence

Statistics from public hospitals show that there is a higher disease incidence among Maori than non-Maoris in almost all diseases treated, a very important finding being that the Maori is in fact more susceptible to the degenerative changes which occur in the human body during late middle life and old age. Because there are few old Maoris, it had been wrongly though that they did not suffer from these degenerative diseases. The higher mortality rate from cancer among the Maoris does not necessarily signify a higher racial incidence. Cancer is a disease which, if diagnosed early enough, may be curable. And early diagnosis is dependent on the recognition by the patient of the first suspicious signs and symptoms.

Some of the heart, kidney, and lung conditions which show a comparatively high death rate in the Maori from middle age upwards may well be the aftermath of infectious diseases incurred during childhood – for example, scarlet fever and whooping cough can result in kidney and respiratory damage. They may also produce in the Maori chronic types of disease which lower his chances of survival.

In the early colonisation of New Zealand the Maoris were ravaged by diseases which killed a high proportion of the people. It is doubtful, however, after over 100 years of association with the European, whether any marked degree of susceptibility to these contagious conditions can remain. It is felt that their poorer standard of health is caused not so much by a greater susceptibility, but rather by the substandard conditions of their housing, where sanitation, water supply, and sewage tend to be more primitive than the average European household. There is also a lower standard of nutrition, personal hygiene, and a failure to provide adequate clothing for children.

Maori and European units in the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force served under similar conditions and yet the health record of both races is similar. In fact, in the case of infective hepatitis the Maori seemed less susceptible than the European.

In a paper on tuberculosis among Maori troops in the Second World War, Dr McDonald Wilson stated that “… the fact that a group of Maoris with this background in civil life who were like the Europeans, incompletely screened prior to going overseas, lived in a strange climate, and underwent all the herding together and privations of campaigns, developed over the years a total of only 48 cases of pulmonary tuberculosis, definitely suggests the Maori is not susceptible to tuberculosis – probably no more so than the average European if he lived under similar conditions to the Maori. With this has to be borne in mind the fact that the incidence of tuberculosis among the Europeans in New Zealand is one of the lowest in the world”.

It is important when dealing with health statistics to appreciate the fact that, in the future, the census and the registration figures for births and deaths will always be unreliable. For all statistical purposes a Maori is defined as a person with 50 per cent or more of Maori blood. The 1961 census shows 62·2 per cent full-blooded Maoris, which is higher than the figure 62·1 in 1945, and very much at variance with the 1936 census figures of 25 per cent for South Island Maoris. Field workers believe that intermarriage has reduced the number of full-blooded Maoris to about 20 per cent, or 30,000, with possibly 120,000 Maoris having a strain of European. Should any of the Maoris in this latter group marry Europeans, their children should be classified as Europeans; but this is not the rule. For census purposes the Maoris and part-Maoris tend to classify themselves into the group in which their interests and cultural ties are strongest; hence the increase of full-blooded Maoris which, though not a true figure, is evidence of their strong racial pride. New Zealand is probably the only country in the world where people with one-quarter, or even an eighth part, of their heriditary blood are proud to belong to a racial minority and to identify themselves with it.

by Rina Winifred Moore, M.B., CH.B., Medical Practitioner, Nelson.

• Primitive Economics of the New Zealand Maori, Firth, R. (1929)
• Report on Department of Maori Affairs, with Statistical Supplement, Hunn, J. K. (1960)
• Maori-European Standards of Health, Medical Statistics Branch, Department of Health, (1960).

MAORI HEALTH AND WELFARE

The Maoris of pre-European days lived in villages, the size of which varied according to the productivity of the surrounding land. The houses were centred round the marae or village green, while the chief's dwelling and superior houses occupied the end farthest from the entrance gateway. In large villages fences divided the dwellings into groups. As remarked upon by Captain Cook, each was occupied by different sections of the inhabitants – usually a body of kinsmen. Each village also had its proper sanitary arrangements, in the form of a common latrine near the edge of a cliff or in some remote spot on the outskirts. Since these villages were sited on hilltops, one must assume from recorded descriptions that Maoris of those times led lives which were of a reasonable hygienic level.

When muskets came into New Zealand as barter in return for food, flax, and kauri spars, there was no longer any need for the Maoris to live in their fortified villages on the hills. They came down from the hills, musket in hand, to save themselves the labour of carrying provisions and fuel to their hill fortresses. On the lowlands and in the centre of their cultivations they built themselves a novel kind of fortification adapted to the capabilities of their new weapon. This was their destruction. There, in swamps, they built their oven-like houses, where water even in summer sprang to the pressure of the foot, and where in winter flooding was common. Under these conditions the Maoris were cut down by disease. No advice would they take; they could not see the enemy which killed them and therefore did not believe the Europeans who pointed out the cause of their destruction. For many years, muskets had disturbed the delicate balance of power held by the small communities of Maoris in New Zealand. It is estimated that during this period 80,000 Maoris died in the musket wars, and many more from European diseases.

In 1906 Dr Maui Pomare, then a Maori Health Officer, made his official report: “We have looked into the question of the decline of the Maori, and have found the causes were legion. Bad housing, feeding, clothing, unventilated rooms, unwholesome pas, were all opposed to the perpetuation of the race; but a deeper knowledge of the Maori reveals to us the fact that these are not the only potent factors in the causation of his decay. Like an imprisoned bird of the forest, he pines for the liberty and freedom of his alpine woods. This was a warrior race, used to fighting for liberty or to death. All this has gone. Fighting is no more. There is no alternative but to become a Pakeha. Was not this saying uttered by the mouth of a dying chief many generations ago: Kei muri i te awa kapara he tangata ke, mana te ao, he ma. (Shadowed behind the tattooed face, a stranger stands, he who owns the earth and he is white.)”

Population Increase

Pomare was convinced that his people would not follow the Tasmanian to extinction; he believed that the destiny of the Maori lay in their absorption by the Pakeha, and that a new race would emerge from the union. In 1906 the census showed that the tide had turned and there was an increase in the Maori population of 4,588. In 1958 the natural increase of the Maori was 37·57 per thousand, as compared with 16·26 per thousand for the non-Maori New Zea-landers. This high natural increase of the Maori is accompanied by a significantly higher birthrate, together with a steadily declining Maori deathrate. The rates for the non-Maori have remained fairly stable. At their present rate of increase the Maoris could comprise 14·7 per cent of the population by the year 2000, as compared with 6·65 per cent in 1959.

This high rate of population increase per thousand of existing population may be transitional as there is a comparatively larger proportion of the Maoris under 21 years of age as compared with 40 per cent of the non-Maoris. For the same reason the death rate, when expressed as a rate per thousand of the population, appears much lower among the Maoris than non-Maoris. There is also a slightly higher proportion of Maori females in the child-bearing ages – 42 per cent, as compared with 39 per cent for non-Maoris. As the Maori population evolves to a more normal distribution of age structure, some fall in the birthrate per thousand of population can be expected, coupled with a rise in the deathrate on the same basis.

Although the Maori deathrate is lower than the European, it should be noted that, because of the different age structure in New Zealand of both populations, a comparison of the European-Maori deathrate, based on specific age rates, gives a totally different picture.

Death Rates, Europeans and Maoris